Andrew Marr and the Pretender – Cameron struggles

Having grilled Gordon last week, Andrew Marr had at the Tory Leader, David Cameron today in Manchester ahead of the Conservative Party Conference. The country is expecting policy pronouncements galore and Cameron had to twist and turn with Marr to get in the, somewhat hazy, pitches on employment and general cuts in services.

Once again, my expectations were trashed. Having thought Brown would mumble his way into irrelevancies – and being uncomfortably impressed with his trial outcome against Marr last week – Cameron by contrast, waffled away into oblivion. This was extremely poor stuff, even when you factor in Marr’s sensationalist approach to – yet again – grab headlines for the Beeb’s News programmes. He attempted to foster controversy by an amazing attack on the ‘toffishness’ of Cameron, which yielded nothing informative.

Quite rightly, Marr pointed out that Cameron had actually failed to answer his questions on European policy following Ireland’s ‘Yes’ result this week in their Lisbon Treaty referendum. Cameron had better wake up quickly to the fact that while he pussyfoots around, trying to keep the internal Euro struggles in his party calm, he is bewildering the watching public. Not a good performance and it pains me to say it, flying in the face of my own prejudices. I am biased. I want Labour out; I am tired of this ‘PC”, spin-orientated and actually completely uncaring approach to government. (It’s true – they simply do not care about people – only their own image.) So to Cameron, banging on about the deficit without actually saying how the Conservatives will tackle it – only when – is not good enough.

Cameron’s approach was to attempt to switch discussion towards the failings of Labour. A fine tactic in months gone by but nowhere near what is needed now to demonstrate he and his party are ready for power. I already know Brown is a triumph of timid-spin over substance and execution. What I want to know is what do Cameron & Co have to offer ? Marr was having none of this bitching and managed the Proposed PM well in this regard. As a TV opportunity, Cameron fluffed it so I am looking forwards to the week’s conference. Will he improve on today’s outing ? It was not strong. No substance. Very disappointing.